In a sigh of lamplight, rain drizzled down the hill. Damp. All was so very damp. It would take a magician grander than I to conjure heat from the shivering cold. The air was a scrooge, stealing warmth pennies it needed not. Eyes could not plead with city smog. Even the nightingales only leaked a slow lamenting warble.
Whispering wands of grasses, tall and softly green, clothed the warming field. Sweet spring and lady summer were its tailor. Oh, how they adore their embellishing blooms! Oh how they adore their silken aromas! Daily it is our joy to see the changes each brings, how upon such artistic whim arises cornflower and daffodil. Poppies in gayest riot! Buttercups a merry jig! What magic there is in humble things. Oh, those whispering wands of meadows, rolling and sweet, clothed my warming dreams.
In dawn’s emboldening rays, the flute sleeps. All the dayshine hours it dreams, reed still, brassy keys at rest. Then, come the eventide, at light lip’s command, its dovish hoots are conjured forth. Night isn’t night as its notes resonate to fill the auditorium. With eyes wide shut, its sound transports us to the height of summer in every season.
We bathed in the summer wind, feeling it eddy-hug all that we are. Our bare arms were its pianos as it played keys in soft cascades. Of wintry wind, it bore no resemblance. Of ice, it carried none. Instead, with fragrant notes that swirled, with the patience of aeons and love’s everlasting hope, it serenaded to the angel within.
All twelve points of the clock were demarcated with alligator teeth. Even the trite ticks, the trite tocks, arrived as clouds of muffled edge, soon to dissipate into a formless fog of deep-set cold. Alba stared, her loathing escalating to a feverish peak. She traced its scaly-skin rim, its scaly skin face, its femur and tibia hands - if that’s what they were. It was a gruesome thing built to measure the era of monsters. Flammable, she thought, and her mind sought the location of a match, a lighter, and perchance an accelerator.
Winter freeze fractured the dreaming air, until in shards of hope we stooped. Limbs of kin and bough did tremble-shake. Coal-veined clouds loomed. Ice pellet rain slew in unforgiving slants. Wind thought not lessen, and instead slammed full force. Window panes rattled. Mean drafts redoubled. Puddle mirrors found no sun. For time out of mind, a season had ne’er been so harsh, so capricious and cruel. Each bore it best they could in silent solemnitude.